Before BOOK II.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Plato and Benjamin Jowett
True.
A new point of view: Is not he who is best able to do good best able to do evil? And he is the best guard of a camp who is best able to 334steal a march upon the enemy?
Certainly.
Then he who is a good keeper of anything is also a good thief?
That, I suppose, is to be inferred.
Then if the just man is good at keeping money, he is good at stealing it.
That is implied in the argument.
Then after all the just man has turned out to be a thief. And this is a lesson which I suspect you must have learnt out of Homer; Bfor he, speaking of Autolycus, the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, who is a favourite of his, affirms that
‘He was excellent above all men in theft and perjury.’
And so, you and Homer and Simonides are agreed that 10 justice is an art of theft; to be practised however ‘for the good of friends and for the harm of enemies,’—that was what you were saying?
No, certainly not that, though I do not now know what I did say; but I still stand by the latter words.
CWell, there is another question: By friends and enemies do we mean those who are so really, or only in seeming?
Justice an art of theft to be practised for the good of friends and the harm of enemies. But who are friends and enemies? Surely, he said, a man may be expected to love those whom he thinks good, and to hate those whom he thinks evil.
Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil: many who are not good seem to be so, and conversely?
That is true.
Then to them the good will be enemies and the evil will be their friends? True.
And in that case they will be right in doing good to the evil and Devil to the good?
Clearly.
But the good are just and would not do an injustice?
True.
Then according to your argument it is just to injure those who do no wrong?
Nay, Socrates; the doctrine is immoral.
Then I suppose that we ought to do good to the just and harm to the unjust?
I like that better.
Mistakes will sometimes happen. But see the consequence:—Many a man who is ignorant of human nature has friends who are bad friends, Eand in that case he ought to do harm to them; and he has good enemies whom he ought to benefit; but, if so, we shall be saying the very opposite of that which we affirmed to be the meaning of Simonides.
Very true, he said: and I think that we had better correct an error into which we seem to have fallen in the use of the words ‘friend’ and ‘enemy.’
What was the error, Polemarchus? I asked.
We assumed that he is a friend who seems to be or who is thought good.
Correction of the definition. To appearance we must add reality. He is a friend who ‘is’ as well as ‘seems’ good, And we should do good to our good friends and harm to our bad enemies. And how is the error to be corrected?
We should rather say that he is a friend who is, as well as 11 seems, good; 335and that he who seems only, and is not good, only seems to be and is not a friend; and of an enemy the same may be said.
You would argue that the good are our friends and the bad our enemies?
Yes.
And instead of saying simply as we did at first, that it is just to do good to our friends and harm to our enemies, we should further say: It is just to do good to our friends when they are good and harm to our enemies when they are evil?
BYes, that appears to me to be the truth.
But ought the just to injure any one at all?
Undoubtedly he ought to injure those who are both wicked and his enemies.
To harm men is to injure them; and to injure them is to make them unjust. But justice cannot produce injustice. When horses are injured, are they improved or deteriorated?
The latter.
Deteriorated, that is to say, in the good qualities of horses, not of dogs?
Source notes
2 Reading φυλάξασθαι καὶ λαθεῖν, οὗτος, κτλ.